Ideas
for reducing unnecessary, preventable deaths in this country have
been in the news a lot lately. Where shall we begin? Annual gun related
homicides total about 11,000 and automobile fatalities are about 35,000
per year.

Would
you be surprised to learn that the leading cause of death in the US
appears
to be the medical system itself. This is the startling conclusion
reached in a report published by medical researchers: Gary Null, PhD;
Carolyn
Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy
Smith, PhD.

Deaths
resulting from inadvertent, adverse effects or complications from
medical treatment or diagnostic proceedures are known as Iatrogenisis,
meaning: Brought forth by a healer (from the Greek iatros, healer).Their
report places the number of annnual iatrgenic (brought forth by a
healer) deaths in the US at 783,936.

Hippocrates
is often regarded as the father of western medicine and 98% of American
medical students swear to some form of the Hippocratic Oath before
practicing medicine. One of the underlying principals of the Oath
is: “first, do no harm.” I'm not sure if that's sad or
ironic.

The
largest single contributor to iatrogenic deaths are prescription drugs,
being used as directed. According to a report issued by Medical News
Today, over 4 billion prescriptions were written for drugs in America
in 2011 . That's an average of over 13 for each man, woman and child.
The average number of prescriptions written annually for a senior
citizen is 28 per year. That doesn't include over- the-counter medications
or vaccines. If these drugs could successfully treat and cure disease,
the United States would have the healthiest inhabitants on the planet.

The
possible adverse reaction warnings on TV drug commercials have become
a punch line for comedian's routines, but, life-threatening side-effects
are no laughing matter. Common side-effects of individual drugs are
well publicized but it's impossible for physicians or pharmacists
to reliably predict what possible side-effects will occur when combining
three, four, 13 or 28 different drugs.

I
was recently saddened to read the obituary of one of my customers,
a strongly-built Military Veteran in his mid-seventies, who appeared
to me to be in excellent health five years ago. His son told me that
he had reviewed his Dad's prescriptions with him and was shocked to
discover that 9 of the 12 drugs his father was taking had been prescribed
to treat side-effects from one of the other drugs. His father was
found dead, lying on the floor of his residence. No autopsy was performed.

The
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study
by Dr. Barbara Starfield, an MD with a Master’s degree in Public
Health, revealing the extremely poor performance of the United States
health care system in a number of areas.

One
of Starfield's main concerns is the lack of systematic recording and
studying of adverse events stemming from prescription drugs. If a
patient dies, there is no routine procedure to notify their physician,
even if the patient is autopsied. Therefore, there is almost no way
for the average doctor to link a patient's death to a possible adverse
reaction to a prescribed medication.

This
is especially troubling because another article published in JAMA
concluded prescription drugs, being used as directed, cause about
106,000 deaths a year and over two million serious injuries annually
in the U.S. This makes prescription drugs the single largest factor
in deaths induced by the medical establishment.

Nationally,
only about 20% of all deaths are subject to investigation by a coronor
or medical examiner. If the cause of death was made certain in all
cases by autopsy, I'm quite sure that the number of deaths actually
caused by prescription drugs, being used as directed, would dwarf
the 106,000 per year the JAMA report acknowleged.

I've
seen enough to believe that in many cases Big-Pharma is far more concerned
with creating repeat, lifetime customers rather than finding cures.
Joining the drug companies, the FDA and insurance companies are the
kingpins behind this profit-driven business model. Some call doctors
well-meaning, unsuspecting pawns of Big-Pharma. Others call them street
level pushers for FDA sanctioned drug cartels. Either way, the kingpins
couldn't do it without medical doctors helping them complete the drug
delivery system.

Due
to concerns about dangerous side-effects from long-term use, many
prescription drugs were, at one time, specifically prescribed only
for short-term use Now, just a few years later, many of the same drugs
are routinely prescribed, indefinitely, for the rest of your life.

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Further,
the Null-Dean report showed that the number of people exposed to unnecessary
hospitalization annually is 8.9 million per year. This is cause for
concern because a 2008 study issued by the Office of Inspector General
for the Department of Health and Human Services, reported that one
in seven Medicare beneficiaries who is hospitalized will be harmed
as a result of the medical care they receive in the hospital.

Prescription
drugs and hospital visits are very risky business. Unlike with other
more well publicized causes of death, simply taking greater personal
responsibility for our own health and well-being could save hundreds
of thousands of lives every year. Unfortunately, more gun or traffic
laws will do nothing to save us from what is actually the Nation's
number one killer, the U.S.medical system.